The News Not Noise Letter: Melania Digs Harris’s Campaign Theme
Melania comes out for freedom. Plus: Debunking hurricane response conspiracy theories, good news on the economy, and Jack Smith strikes again.
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Hello and happy Friday. Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish High Holidays. This is the holiest time in the Jewish year. I am trying to make it to the end of services today so I’m going to jump right into the news. Today we cover Hurricane Helene recovery, Melania Trump’s new book, good news on the economy, Jack Smith’s new filing, and the latest from the Middle East.
Thank you to everyone who sent in lovely messages in response to my Rosh Hashanah posts on Instagram.
Here are your headlines:
Recovery in Progress: Hurricane Helene is now the second deadliest storm in US history with at least 215 reported dead Thursday. That number continues to climb. Roughly half of the victims were in western North Carolina, where hundreds of residents remain unaccounted for as cell and wifi service remain spotty, forcing emergency crews to rely on radio communication. Note: we know at least one North Carolina family was given a chance to call loved ones on a FEMA satellite phone. Volunteers are riding in all-terrain vehicles and cutting through trees to deliver supplies, while the National Guard is flying water and meals to mountain towns where roads and bridges collapsed. Peter O’Leary, mayor of Chimney Rock, NC, told CNN, “we have monumental challenges in front of us.”
Don’t Believe the Lies: Some outlets are falsely reporting that FEMA is out of funds because they spent the money on undocumented migrants. This is not true. Disaster relief funds are separate from other expenditures. The disaster relief fund is running low because climate change is making disasters more destructive, expensive, and frequent. Congress shored up the agency’s disaster relief fund last week, approving $20 billion as part of a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown. President Biden plans to ask Congress to allocate additional funding to the agency. Helene’s devastating effects spanned multiple states, and FEMA is on the ground across the Southeast.
Climate Impact: Two new reports found warming temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico caused by human-driven climate change likely fueled Helene’s destructive power. One study said Helene’s “observed rainfall was made up to 20 times more likely … because of global warming.”
Soft Landing? U.S. employers added 254,000 jobs in September, a surge that defied expectations and offered signs of stability in the labor market just weeks ahead of the presidential election. The unemployment rate ticked down from 4.2% in August to 4.1% in September, according to data released Friday. How will this impact the Fed’s next interest rate decision? They’re expected to make one more rate cut before the election. Worth noting: Those numbers do not reflect the impacts of Hurricane Helene or the short-lived dockworkers strike that began Tuesday and ended with a temporary deal on Thursday.
Nevertheless, Jack Smith Persisted: This week a federal court unsealed a new filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith in Trump’s federal Jan. 6 case. The new filing adjusts the case in response to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. It focuses narrowly on actions Smith says Trump took outside his role as president. Specifically Smith argues that the president has “no official role” in “the government function by which votes are collected and counted,” therefore Trump’s “scheme was fundamentally a private one.”
Some Specifics: When Trump was told that then-VP Mike Pence was in danger in the Capitol riot, he allegedly said, “So what?” And when Rudy Giuliani sought to convince a state lawmaker to help appoint a slate of fake electors, he sent the message to the wrong number.
Trump Response: The Trump team dismissed the filing as a “Biden Harris regime” attempt to “interfere in this election” and called Smith “deranged.”
Vance Isn’t Sure: The filing comes on the heels of the vice-presidential debate, where J.D. Vance refused to acknowledge that his running mate lost the 2020 election. He doubled down on that stance a day later, saying he preferred to focus “on the election of 33 days from now.”
Melania’s Awakening: Melania Trump is a lifelong supporter of abortion rights, according to an excerpt of her forthcoming memoir and an oddly dramatic promotional video posted on social media Thursday. Her new embrace of policy is at odds with her husband’s record on the issue – and his current effort to downplay his responsibility for upending abortion access in America after spending a year congratulating himself for upending abortion access in America. Some analysts view the former First Lady’s book as a last-ditch effort to try to woo swing and women voters. Side note: Melania is now claiming that she convinced her husband to change his controversial family separation program. (At the time, she didn’t seem to care.)
On the Campaign Trail:
Cheneys for Harris: Republican former Congresswoman Liz Cheney campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris in Wisconsin Thursday, proclaiming she would “proudly” cast her vote for Harris. Cheney said that while she’s “never voted for a Democrat,” her choice was made easy by Trump’s “depravity” on Jan. 6th. Trump panned the speech on Truth Social, dismissing Cheney and her father, former VP Dick Cheney, as “suffering gravely from Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Scene of the Crime: Today Trump is campaigning in Georgia with Governor Brian Kemp, a sometime target of Trump’s election-related rage. Trump will return Saturday to Butler, Pennsylvania, where a man shot into the crowd at a July Trump rally in what authorities are calling an attempted assassination. He’ll be joined by a long list of “special guests,” including Elon Musk, songwriter Lee Greenwood, and family members of Corey Comperatore, a firefighter who was killed at the rally.
Harris’s Helene Briefing: VP Harris will visit North Carolina on Saturday to receive a briefing on recovery efforts, according to the White House.
Obama on the Trail: Former President Barack Obama will stump for Harris in a swing-state blitz that will kick off next Thursday in Pittsburgh. Obama has also recorded ads for Democrats in competitive Senate races in Florida, Maryland, and Michigan.
Middle East: In a first-in-his-presidency visit to the White House Briefing Room, President Biden said that Israel has time to decide how it will retaliate for Iran’s bombardment of Israeli cities and military sites this week. President Biden is urging Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities – which international authorities assess are capable of developing a nuclear weapon in short order. Instead, Biden said the US and Israel are “discussing” the possibility of strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure, which could cripple the regime (and therefore its terror proxies) financially. Biden says it’s possible to avoid an “all-out war,” but also acknowledges, “we don’t allow Israel, we advise Israel.”
The Calculation: Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other regional partners have a strategic interest in weakening Iran’s extremist and repressive regime and eliminating its nuclear facilities – which they consider a grave threat. Would an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities trigger global terror reprisals? If Israel strikes Iran’s oil infrastructure, would Iran launch similar strikes on Arab oil producers and trigger a global spike in prices?
Hezbollah and Lebanon: This week Israel launched a limited ground operation in Lebanon, to eliminate tunnels and Hezbollah infrastructure and leadership. A degraded Hezbollah creates more options for an attack on Iran. Also, the IDF reports it foiled a planned massacre in northern Israel by thousands of Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives just days after Hamas slaughtered over 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Lebanese People: Over 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced and over 2,000 killed, according to authorities. Numerous Lebanese are evacuating to Syria, even as a major road connecting the two countries was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. The US is pressuring Lebanon to hold new elections as soon as possible. Lebanon has not had a president for two years, in large part thanks to Hezbollah’s efforts to undermine complex parliamentary mediations.
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“When Jessica Yellin speaks, we all listen!”—Thank you for easily-digestible fact-dense news source.
It means a lot, to know when I hear something “crazy—e.g. Haitians eating dogs”, the ABSENCE of such crazy, is all I need to know.
I, literally said, if Jessica didn’t say it, I don’t believe it. They wanted to cite sources—SMH nope. She didn’t cover it!